how to: creating your small business Facebook page
What to know
Why create a Facebook business page?
Marketing a business can include a variety of techniques and strategies, however social media networking is becoming a more significant, sometimes essential, tool for generating business interest. Facebook is becoming ever so popular, as we hear just about everywhere. What follows will give you everything you need to know to market your product/service, business, or idea throughout Facebook. For those still stubborn in believing Facebook is a site for college party pictures alone-, everyone deserves a second change.
Facebook Pages are different from profiles. You have a profile for you while your business has a page. Here, you can provide all of the important information about your business, (WITH EASY UPDATING!) such as:
- Overview of company
- General Description
- Website and contact info
- Product/Service Info
- Videos
- Twitter updates
- Company news and status
- Customer Interaction
- Blog RSS
Creative Business
Facebook allows us a free way to be creative in marketing our business. It is important to keep the mentality that you are using Facebook to create interest in your business or ideas, rather than profit. Bugging people will only hurt your reputation. Instead, be creative. Here is one thought:
- Post or allow fans to post videos. Encourage industry-related videos. How interesting is it staring at text text text? Remember, the goal here is to attract more and more users each day.
There are many ways to create successful business pages. There is an excellent article here that gives 10 great successful Facebook business pages. Most of these pages are big-time brands with millions allocated for marketing purposes, but this article pinpoints whats great about each featured page, giving a great resource when implementing your very own page.
Keep in Mind
You don’t need a business! Facebook pages can simply be a planning mechanism. Create a group or page solely to get interest in what you have to offer. Once you are ready to do business, you could have a group of people within the same industry on stand by to hear you are launching your new business!
Also keep in mind…
You may want to set certain permissions to your business page, or allow access to individual sections. You may also decide to make it your profile completely public, which could help you become more visible in your industry. Either way, Facebook makes it relatively easy to set your privacy settings.
Promoting your page
In order for people to visit your Facebook business page, they have to know about it. This could be tricky because you don’t want to spam people, but you want to inform them of your page. People themselves have to elect to be a fan of your page, so you have to pay particular attention to constantly updating and introducing your page to new people and groups.
Start by creating a list or group of contacts of yours that are business related, industry related, or could benefit from your outreach. Invite them to become a fan of your page, in order to get the latest news feeds sent by your business. Remember,you want to build your friend list, so that you have more people to market to now and in the future.
You should also promote your Page elsewhere online by putting a Facebook Page button on your website to help others find it, spreading the word on Twitter if you’re there (and you should be), sending out an email notification, or putting a link on your business cards. Do whatever it takes to help people know that you’re on Facebook and you want them to become a part of your community.
Driven By Excellence, A Jersey Shore limousine travel and transportation business, gives a good example of adding Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn quick link icons to a website. Click here to see the home page.
